


Another Night in Texas

by SylvanWitch



Series: Nights Like These [2]
Category: Justified, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 18:51:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are easier ways to get Raylan's attention.  Dean doesn't choose those.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Night in Texas

**Author's Note:**

> Part II of the series.

Raylan Givens was feeling pretty good when he strolled back through the door of the Oklahoma City field office.

He’d apprehended the fugitive without firing his weapon—an action he enjoyed but that caused a whole lot of needless fuss and paperwork—and scored a date with the hot cashier at the convenience store said fugitive had been attempting to rob.

So when he breezed past Sally’s desk and heard words he typically dreaded—“Message for you. It’s urgent”—he almost didn’t stop.

Why ruin what promised to be a perfectly good Friday night by acknowledging the edge in Sally’s voice and taking up that deceptively dangerous pink piece of paper?

Damn it. 

“Alright, Sal. Thanks,” he said, giving her a smile that had long since failed to impress her. She had, after all, spent a lot of time processing his paperwork.

And he generated a shitload of that.

The note was terse to the point of cryptic: “Oxacala sheriff’s office. Failure to deliver.” The phone number was a Texas area code, and Raylan groaned inwardly as he dialed.

He was done with Texas.

Done. Done. Done.

“Deputy Marshal Givens, where the hell is Leroy Tatum?”

Biting back the urge to answer, “Somewhere in New Mexico,” Raylan put on his best accommodating-the-loonies voice and answered, “Well, sir, I have to admit you’ve got me at a disadvantage.”

A grunt and then, “Sheriff Rosco Jenkins, Felton County. You met my deputy, Sarah Erskine, earlier today when you picked up the prisoner. Who hasn’t been delivered. You’re two hours overdue. Care to explain yourself?”

Two hours ago, Raylan had been sitting outside a convenience store that was about to be robbed.

“I think there’s been some misunderstanding,” Raylan said slowly, gesturing frantically with the hand not holding the phone to get Sally’s attention, and then thrusting a hastily scribbled note at her when she hurried over.

The note read: “Leroy Tatum, Oxacala?”

Mouthing, “He ours?” to Sally, he returned his attention to the conversation in time to hear

“—ain’t often we get a triple homicide. Fact, it ain’t happened here since back when this was just a territory full of Injuns and horse thieves.”

“Uh,” Raylan drawled helplessly.

“Goddamnit, boy, they got someone brighter ‘n a forty-watt bulb in your office I could talk to?”

“Sorry, sir. I’m just—“

Raylan was spared the humiliation of admitting that he had no idea what the sheriff was talking about when Sally handed him a neatly printed note.

“Leroy Tatum. Kidnapping, rape, homicide. Remanded into your custody at 1:00pm. You were supposed to drop him off at the Dallas office by 4:00.” 

“Sir, I’m going to have to call you back,” Raylan said abruptly, hanging up the phone on the sheriff’s indignant squawk, loud enough that it drew the attention of the two neighboring marshals.

“Problem?” Seavers smirked, raising one of his perfectly shaped eyebrows and pursing his mouth in a way that made Raylan want to punch him repeatedly.

“Nope, nothing I can’t handle,” Raylan lied, giving Sally, meantime, wide eyes.

Sally shook her head, tapping out a quick rhythm on her keyboard as he approached her, saying sotto voce, “What the hell is going on?”

Without a word, Sally turned her monitor toward Raylan and jabbed an eloquent finger at the photo identification scan she’d had sent over from Oxacala.

U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens, the identification read, but the ID number was wrong and the photograph was most definitely not him.

“Son of a bitch,” Raylan breathed. 

*****

Generally speaking, Dean Winchester didn’t have much patience for the past. With the obvious exception of his mother’s murder and the ensuing vendetta, there wasn’t anything from his past that Dean particularly cared to remember.

With Sam gone—not dead, but just as good as, off at his fancy college learning things that made him less and less useful to Dean and their dad—Dean made a point of forgetting as often as possible.

If forgetting took the form of a bottle and a busty blonde, all the better.

He’d have been well on the way to forgetting his own name, never mind the name of a deputy marshal he met a million years ago, if it hadn’t been for the fucking shifter.

Man, he hated them.

Always had, since a hunt at fifteen when he’d watched one of those things turn into his father and start spewing lies at him. The shifter had already gotten through a bunch of bullshit about Sam being “tainted” and Dean himself being doomed to a life in the shadows before he’d shot the son of a bitch right through the heart with a silver bullet.

That had shut it up.

Now he’s blinking away the last of the whiskey-haze, watching what he’s pretty sure is another of the evil bastards work a girl off of her lonely bar stool and out to the parking lot.

Damn it.

Just off a successful harpy kill and a whole day early for his rendezvous with Dad, Dean had been looking forward to some down-time.

No such luck.

Sighing as he stands and drops a ten on the table and a regretful grin on the waitress who’d been watching him all night, Dean follows the would-be couple at a leisurely pace, not wanting to tip off the monster before Dean himself can scope out the territory.

Slipping out of the door, Dean ducks into the shadow of the eaves and lets his eyes adjust, reaching for the silver bullet he keeps in his change pocket with one hand and for the gun at the small of his back with the other.

As he loads and chambers the round, he hears a muted squeak, as of a woman taken by surprise, and he hurries around the corner of the bar in the direction from which the sound came.

He gets nothing but an eyeful of dumpster and reels back as the potent stench washes over him.

Okay. Other way. 

Pivoting, Dean jogs the breadth of the bar and ducks around the other corner, relieved to find nothing here but a dusty gallery dotted with picnic tables, blessedly empty on this dark, chilly night.

His boots sound overloud on the gravel as he clears the gallery railing and puts the wall at his back, ducking his head around the rear corner of the bar and scanning for movement, straining to hear over the pounding of blood in his ears any sound that’s out of place.

There!

There are only three cars parked out here, dim shapes hulking at the far edge of the wan yellow light cast by the single sodium bulb over the employees’ entrance, but near the furthest of the three, Dean can just make out two struggling figures.

Ducking low, he makes a dash for the cover of the nearest car, a rusted piece of shit that stinks of leaking gasoline. Peeking around the windshield, he watches the figures resolve into the lonely girl from the bar, bent back over the hood, hands pinned over her head, and the shifter, leaning menacingly over her.

He takes the time to line up the shot, breathes deeply to steady his hands, starts to squeeze the trigger.

“Freeze!”

Startled, Dean jerks the muzzle, pulls his finger from the trigger, and drops into an awkward crouch even as his target is lit up by blinding white lights. A voice booms over a loudspeaker, “Step away from the girl and put your hands in the air. Do it now!”

The shifter obeys, and Dean waits only long enough to see the girl slip away from the creature and scrabble clear of the car, stumbling, arms reaching and mouth wide with wailing as she’s met by two cops in Kevlar vests who pull her to safety.

He doesn’t stop to watch as the cops move in on the shifter. He’s already moving away from the scene, melting into the darkness in the scrub field beyond the parking lot, moving like a ghost to keep out of reach of the swift fingers of spotlights that probe and sweep the lot.

“Shit,” he growls to himself when he’s back at his car, gun stowed, breath controlled, hands easy on the wheel. There’s a gauntlet of emergency vehicles and SWAT guys, but he’s not worried about making his way through it. He’s not the one they wanted, after all.

No, Dean reflects as he cruises through the quiet town toward his motel on its opposite edge. It’s not escaping the cops he’s worried about. It’s what that thing is going to do to the cops who caught him that’s the real problem.

*****

Raylan would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about Dean now and then. Of course, he’d only be lying to himself, since he’s never told a soul about the dangerous young man he’d once had at his back on a warm summer’s night in an anonymous Texas roadhouse.

And for whatever reason, though he’d been sorely tempted a time or two, Raylan’s never tried to learn more about Dean from any of the many databases he has at his disposal.

He’s sure he’d find Dean there, and he’s equally sure he doesn’t want to.

While he makes it a rule not to lie to himself, then, Raylan’s happy enough to pretend over the ensuing years that whenever he’s thought about Dean, the image has been vague and uncertain, like a shaken witness trying to give a description of a man he saw in the dark at a dead run.

Fact is, Raylan remembers every detail, down to the same direct, lying look that Dean had leveled at the camera when he had this i.d. photo snapped. It’s a look that says, “Trust me, I’m the law,” and it’s guaranteed to get Dean what he wants, whether it’s an interview or something more intimate. He’d seen it when Dean was backing down the other rednecks who’d wanted to get involved in their little two-on-three tete-a-tete.

He’d also seen it fall away when Raylan had asked him his name in the parking lot after the excitement had ended.

Staring now at the familiar face looking out at him from beside a yet-more-familiar name, his own, Raylan wonders if this is Dean’s way of getting his attention.

Then he wonders if he’s been hitting the sauce a little too hard. Probably, the kid thought it’d be funny, a way to stick it to the man. Hell, they’d known each other for a handful of minutes what feels like a lifetime ago.

No reason to think Dean wants Raylan to come looking.

No reason not to come looking regardless of what Dean wants, either.

*****

Dean tells himself it’s because the last time he used his fake marshal ID, the feds they’d been playing for information had seemed suspicious there at the end. ID’s probably compromised by now.

Tells himself that U.S. Deputy Marshal Angus Young doesn’t sound nearly as believable for Texas as “Raylan Givens.”

Tells himself it’s got nothing at all to do with the way his father snaps at him like Dean’s a kid again, says, “Damnit, Dean,” in disappointment, like it’s Dean’s fault he ran into a shifter on his down-time or that said shifter got picked up before Dean could pick him off.

It’s sure as hell got nothing to do with being lonely, he tells himself.

Dean’s a liar.

The satisfaction he gets signing Raylan Givens’ name and handing over his photo ID for scanning lasts only until the prisoner—Leroy Tatum, he learns—is led out of lock-up and turned over to his care by a sober-faced sheriff’s deputy named Erskine who doesn’t bat so much as an eyelash at Dean’s charming smile.

“He’s a slick one, this guy, and cold-blooded as they come. Not to tell you how to do your job, Marshal, but I wouldn’t even take him out of shackles if I were you.” 

She gives him a flinty stare he’s fairly sure she’s practiced in a mirror.

“Why Deputy Erskine,” Dean says through a knowing little smile, “You certainly aren’t suggesting that I violate this man’s constitutional rights?”

“Violate more ‘n that, if you want,” she answers. “He’s killed at least seven girls that we know of, three of them in my town.” 

If Dean had been at all confused about her words, the tone of them would’ve cleared up her meaning just fine.

Since Dean’s planning to kill the prisoner as soon as it’s nightfall and they’re well out of town, he can give the deputy his own grim look and an understanding half-nod before he shoves “Leroy” toward the door.

He’d parked the Impala around the corner, knowing she’s not exactly standard issue, and as he hustles the shifter toward her and snaps on the silver cuffs—also not standard issue— he hisses a low warning in the creature’s ear, “I can shoot you here as well as out on the flats.”

Knowing that shifters are built for survival, he figures this’ll give him a couple hours of peace, at least long enough to actually clear the town limits and use the cover of dark to seal the deal. It’s likely enough the shifter will try something, though Dean’s not exactly sure what. After he’d calmed down during their earlier conversation, Dad had briefed Dean on the shapeshifter’s typical M.O. and then ended the call with a reminder that there’s nothing really typical from one shapeshifter to the next.

So Dean’s hoping for the best but planning for the worst as the Impala’s shadow ghosts along beside them, monstrous in the failing light.

“There’s one left,” the shifter says as they drift to a stop behind a moldering service station that looks like its last customers were Dust Bowl refugees.

Dean ignores the creature, wrestles its struggling weight out of the back seat, sweating despite the sudden drop in temperature out here where the sun takes the last of the heat with it when it goes down.

With an audible effort, Dean shoves the shifter toward a hole half-filled with rotten garbage, black plastic bags bursting like pustules, spewing filth. Someone’s aborted attempt at illegal dumping, he guesses, dug up by coyotes, judging by the scat drawing flies at the edge of the pit. 

Without anything approaching ceremony, Dean pulls his gun, checks to make sure that it’s loaded with silver bullets—he plans to get it right in one, but his father didn’t raise a fool who’d let pride get in the way of a kill—and aims it at the shifter.

“Wait!” It cries, face beseeching, knees trembling. Behind its back, it strains to open its hands in supplication. “Please. There’s another one. Another girl. I can take you to her. She’s still alive, but she’ll die if someone doesn’t come for her.”

“Bullshit,” Dean says, not easing even an ounce of pressure from the trigger.

“No, really. There’s another one, I swear. She’s further west, past Dunsbar. In a house by a pond. I can show you. I’ll take you there.”

The notion of a road trip with a shapeshifter holds zero appeal for Dean, but the possibility that it’s telling the truth—slim though the chances are—makes him reconsider his immediate course of action. 

The shifter must see it in Dean’s face, that hesitation, because it pushes. “She’s real pretty. Blonde. Fifteen, I think. Name’s Amy.”

Dean tries not to conjure an image of the terrified girl abandoned in some shithole waiting desperately for help that never comes.

“Fuck,” he bites out under his breath, putting on the safety and putting his gun away. 

They’re going to Dunsbar.

*****

The kid had never given Raylan his full name, but that didn’t offer much of an impediment, not when he was motivated by the fact that Dean had stolen his identity for the purpose of springing a federal prisoner—and a nasty one, at that.

Feeling ten kinds of fool for having so badly misjudged Dean, Raylan works his way through outstanding warrants in Texas, where he’d last seen the kid, giving it six months to either side of the date as best he can remember it. He throws in the classic car—pretty sure it was a big ol’ Chevy, late sixties—and gets a hit after twenty minutes of doodling on his desk blotter and trying to ignore Seavers’ not-so-subtle comments about Ray’s “problem.”

Dean Winchester: Petty larceny. Possession of unregistered firearms. Credit card fraud. Two counts of impersonating an officer of the law. 

Good to know Raylan’s not the first dupe.

Still, the charges, while extensive enough for a guy Dean’s age, are not outside the limits of Raylan’s expectations.

Grave desecration. 

Huh.

Raylan shakes off the frisson of unease that shoots down his spine at the last list of charges (Who sets fires in a graveyard?) and tips back in his seat to think for a minute. Nothing on Dean’s rap sheet—interesting though it is—suggests he’d step up to a major federal crime, and if there’s a thread linking the Winchesters—brother, Sam; father, John—to Leroy Tatum, it’s not immediately obvious.

Raylan should call the sheriff of Felton County, have him issue a warrant, get out a description of the car. Should tell his boss, too, what’s happening. That’s protocol for an escaped federal prisoner.

Without doing any of those things, Raylan stands, reaches for his gun and then his hat, tips it to Sally, who’s just locking up her desk for the weekend, and heads out for Dean’s last known location. This is one of those times when the personal trumps the procedural. Dean’s wearing his name and mocking the badge he’s proud to wear, and Raylan means to find out why before he throws the kid’s ass in jail.

Oxacala, Texas, isn’t much of a town, but what it lacks in size its sheriff makes up for in attitude. Dragged back to the station in the middle of dinner by Raylan’s unexpected arrival, and not especially happy with the way their last conversation ended, Sheriff Jenkins spends the first fifteen minutes of their interview stripping the hide from Raylan’s backside.

He spends ten minutes after that salting the wounds with a series of increasingly sarcastic comments about the misuse of federal taxes in funding the U.S. Marshals’ service, “Which, by the way, saw some of the greatest of ‘em born not too far from here, but what you boys’ve done with it is a cryin’ shame, and there’s no doubt. If I wasn’t a God-fearing churchgoer, I’d expect to see Wyatt Earp himself haunting your sorry ass.”

It’s this kind of down-home wisdom that makes Raylan glad he left Harlan. Save for the accent, he could be standing across the desk from his high school principal, Jethro T. “Ache” McEachern.

When he can finally get a word in, Raylan does his best to explain how a known fugitive of the law came to choose his identity to steal. Somehow, he thinks telling Jenkins that he and Dean met during a bar fight isn’t the way to earn respect from the irate lawman, so he fudges the details of their meeting, which is fine, because it launches the sheriff on another tirade, this time about Dean Winchester.

Raylan’s got some reason to agree with the sheriff’s assessment, but he interrupts him before he gets up a full head of steam.

“I agree, sir, that Mr. Winchester’s a bad man, no doubt, and I’d like to see that he commits no more criminal acts under my name, so if you’d kindly point me in the general direction of his departure…” He leaves it there, hoping the sheriff will interrupt him with something useful.

Instead, he twists his face up scornfully, spits into a cup he keeps on the desk, apparently for that purpose, and points toward the dark and empty outer office.

“Deputy Erskine’s the last one that saw ‘em, and I don’t rightly know what she could tell you. Reckon you’ll have to wait ‘til tomorrow, either way. She’s on a date in Tulsa, and it ain’t worth my hide to call her in from that.”

His tone suggests that he’s also enjoying Raylan’s considerable discomfort and has no intention of curtailing it. 

Recognizing defeat when it’s staring him in the face with flinty, narrowed eyes, Raylan says, “Then if you’d kindly recommend a place I could stay?”

“Wanderer’s Rest is the only motel we got,” the sheriff answers, pointing vaguely west. 

“Thank you for your help,” Raylan manages, without even a hint of irony, and then he turns and exits, an act made easier by the fact that he’d never been offered a seat.

The fifties-era one-storey “motor court” boasts an empty, fenced-in, once-blue in-ground pool, weeds growing tall around it and through cracks in the bottom. A Fanta machine propped at an angle against the wall beside the office door suggests that there haven’t been any updates to the motel since the seventies, and judging from the avocado-and-orange interior of said office, Raylan’s estimate is pretty accurate.

An ancient woman, sun-spotted and wrinkled and stinking of cigarettes and cheap perfume, tells Raylan her name’s “Delilah,” and hands him a plastic keyring with what’s left of the number 12 on it in flaking gold paint.

Without much hope, Raylan asks if she’s seen a ’67 Impala, and her eyes light up behind the haze of cigarette smoke from the perpetually smoldering butt in the ashtray between them.

“Ye-ap,” she says, two syllables drawn out. She flicks a piece of loose tobacco from her lip and says, “I noticed on account of it looked like a car my second husband, Ernie, got a dime for boosting back in ’73. She’s a beaut.”

“That she is,” Raylan agrees, trying to keep the excitement from his voice. “You happen to see which way she went?”

“Ye-ap,” Delilah answers, her eyes narrowing shrewdly. “Why you askin’? Is Mr. Bonham in trouble or somethin’?”

Raylan’s excitement ratchets up a notch. “Mr. Bonham? He look like this?” He extracts the photo ID scan from his jacket pocket, covers the name with his hand.

She squints for a long second, long enough to take a drag of her cigarette and blow the smoke over her shoulder, before she nods. “Ye-ap, that’s him. Stayed here a couple a nights. Checked out this mornin’. What’s he done?”

“Not a thing, ma’am. I just want to ask him a few questions is all.”

She makes a rude noise of disbelief and shakes her head. “I thought he was too pretty to be a travelling salesman.” After a pause, during which Raylan’s almost sure she’s asleep standing, Delilah points an arthritic finger at the road and says, “He headed out into the flats. Only thing that way is sagebrush and sideroads. Ain’t nothin’ to look at for two hundred miles ‘cept Jimson’s Service Station, and that closed in ’74.”

“I’m in your debt,” he says, gallantly tipping his hat and setting the key back down on the counter. “And I won’t be needing a room after all, but you can keep the money for your trouble.”

Delilah chuckles. “Ain’t no trouble lookin’ at a fine man like you,” she says, pocketing the folded bills he’d put down for her and turning away, cigarette trembling precariously between her fingers. “Take it easy, Lawman,” follows him out the office door.

*****

The only thing distinguishing Dunsbar, Texas, from the flatlands and dust country around it is a straggling line of modest homes, a nondescript church, two bars, a diner, and a store sporting a hand-painted sign telling him it’s Jeb’s General Store and Feed Center.

They’re through it in about thirty seconds, Dean’s eyes scanning for trouble, the shifter in the back seat saying, “Can’t we stop for a soda? I’m thirsty.”

Fat chance.

Dean ignores his whining—as he’s been doing for the last eighty miles—and instead slows as a side road approaches the road from the north.

“This it?”

“Yeah,” the shifter answers, though it’s hesitant, like he’s not quite sure. 

He’s probably not, given that he’s making it up as he goes along. Never con a con, Dean thinks, turning down the road anyway. He’s not all that worried about an ambush. It’s pretty clear that this shifter isn’t quite as cunning as the general reputation of the monster might make him out to be. There’s little chance the creature has a trap set up out here. More likely, he was hoping for some inspiration on the long drive to Dunsbar.

The rutted surface of the road taking a toll on his suspension, Dean finally brings them to a stop beside the remains of an ancient tractor, its spindly accessories strangely ominous in the dust-cloud kicked up by the Impala.

An anemic moon casts a yellow pall over the scene. Getting out, Dean assesses the situation. He can see for miles—not that there’s anything to see. It’s as good a place as any to waste and bury this fucker.

“Get out,” he orders, opening the back door. “C’mon.”

“My legs are asleep,” the shifter says. Dean ignores the complaint. 

Eventually, after a series of noises Dean guesses are supposed to inspire sympathy in him, the shifter staggers out of the backseat and promptly pitches forward.

If it expected Dean to stop its fall, it gets an unpleasant surprise when it ends up sprawled facedown in the dirt.

“I can shoot you here just as well as out there,” Dean notes blandly, drawing his gun. The threat does nothing to silence the shifter, who is moaning piteously and squirming around trying to get its knees under it.

Sighing, Dean at last puts his gun away and reaches out to help the thing up. He doesn’t want to touch it—knows better, in fact, knows this might very well be part of its eleventh hour survival plan—but if he shoots it here, he has to carry its corpse back into the scrub, and he learned a long time ago that if you can make the prey cover the ground under its own power, that’s the preferred method for disposal.

Sure enough, as he hauls the shifter to its feet, the creature presses its full weight into Dean, obviously trying to stagger him or even knock him over. Dean is ready for it, though, and keeps his balance, propping the monster upright and shoving it a little in the direction of the trim edge of darkness just beyond the Impala’s steady headlights.

“Move.”

Reluctantly, the creature does so, dragging its feet, sniffling like a child being put to bed early, pausing every now and then as though it’s sniffing the air.

They’re a dozen yards out into the moon-washed scrub when Dean hears what he thinks might be an engine. He looks away from the shifter back toward the road and feels his heart swoop into his stomach at the twin beams of fast-approaching headlights coming their way.

“Damn it,” he swears, reaching out to grab the shifter and turn it about toward the car once more. A dozen feet from the Impala’s hood, Dean realizes they aren’t going to make it. If the car coming at them stops—and what’re the chances it won’t, given his luck?—they’ll be caught out in the open, Dean with a gun, the shifter in cuffs.

He has to hope his badge does the trick of backing down whatever would-be rescuer is barreling toward them.

“Keep your mouth shut,” he growls, stepping between the shifter, six feet behind him and still in deep shadow, and the figure that’s just climbed out of the idling car nosed up behind the Impala.

“Howdy,” Dean calls, preemptively. “I’m going to have to ask you to get back in your vehicle. I’m a U.S. Marshal transporting a dangerous fugitive.”

“Why Marshal Givens, as I live and breathe,” a naggingly familiar voice answers. The figure’s stride doesn’t falter at Dean’s words of warning, and he feels a chill tickle his spine as the tall man steps into the broad swath of light cast by the Impala.

“Fancy meeting you here,” an even more familiar man continues, eyes alight with warning and hand steady on his drawn gun.

*****

Raylan’s met a lot of dumb criminals in his time. In his considerable experience, criminal masterminds are the product of Hollywood movies and overactive imaginations, not real-life people out to rule the world with their wiles.

The jury’s still out on whether or not Dean Winchester is dumb, but Raylan reflects as he pulls to a stop in Dunsbar that driving a vintage Impala probably isn’t the best way to stay under the law’s radar. 

The two guys sitting on the porch of Jeb’s General Store and Feed Center sharing a jar of clear liquor offer him a drink and the information that a “beaut of a Chevy” went by about a half an hour ago, heading out of town.

“Don’t know why anyone’d go that way. Ain’t nothin’ out there ‘til you get to Lubbock, practically,” one of them notes.

Raylan isn’t sure what Dean’s motives are for kidnapping Leroy Tatum, but he has a fair notion of what a man like Dean might want with a lonesome stretch of unoccupied road and a helpless prisoner of Tatum’s particular nature.

“Either of you happen to notice if there was someone in the backseat?”

“Ay-yup,” one of the two answers, spitting a brown stream of tobacco into the weeds at the edge of the porch. “Some pale-lookin’ fella.”

“I thank you,” Raylan says, already moving away, the tip of his hat a cursory gesture.

Dunsbar receding rapidly in his rearview—Raylan’s put his federal car through its paces tonight, never dropping below 100 unless he’s been ghosting through some dusty little backwater—Raylan realizes he has a problem. There are probably fifty side roads just like the one that’s fast approaching on his right, and he has no way of knowing which one, if any, Dean might’ve taken.

Slowing down and considering the rutted dirt road, Raylan is startled by a flash of light on the horizon to the north. Stopping altogether, he stares hard, trying to see what caused it or if it will be repeated.

Nothing.

Might be nothing. Couple of locals hunting jackrabbits on ATVs. Hippie types having an illegal campout. Shit, his own brain providing him with something he’d like to see.

Still, with precious few prospects of success ahead of him, Raylan figures he should go with his gut. 

His gut, as usual, does right by him when his headlights make out the hulking shape of the Impala, headlights angled out into the scrub, two figures caught in their wash.

“Why Marshal Givens, as I live and breathe,” Raylan offers mockingly as he gets out of his car. Drawing his gun and calculating distance and angle, he steps into the light from Dean’s car and adds, “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Marshal,” Dean answers, offering a good ol’ boy smile that doesn’t fool Raylan for a minute. “I gotta say, you have the worst timing.”

“Seems your prisoner there might have a different opinion.”

“I surely do,” Leroy pipes up from his position out in the darkness, “You came at just the right time, sir. Why, I don’t know what—”

“Shut up,” Dean and Raylan say at the same time.

“You want to throw your gun away, nice and slow, and walk toward me with your hands up, Dean?”

“Not really, no.”

“Wasn’t really askin’,” Raylan notes, letting a little of his irritation seep into his voice.

“All the same, I’m gonna stay right here,” Dean says. “There’s a lot about this situation you don’t understand, Marshal, and it’s safer for both of us if you just—“

“What the hell?” Raylan interrupts Dean because he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. It’s got to be a trick of the light, some combination of moonlight, headlights, and the pervasive dust of this place. 

But Dean’s reaction to Raylan’s words suggests that he’s seeing it, too. Before Raylan can so much as put pressure on the trigger, Dean’s ducked, turned toward the prisoner, and come up with his gun aimed steadily at Leroy Tatum’s advancing form.

Except he doesn’t look like Leroy Tatum, not even a little. He looks for all the world like…

“Son of a bitch!” Dean shouts loudly, and then quieter he says what sounds like, “I fucking hate shifters.”

But that can’t be right.

Of course, it can’t be right that Leroy Tatum looks exactly like Dean Winchester, either.

“Raylan, this man kidnapped me,” the cuffed Dean says. “Caught me when I was just passing through Oxacala, cuffed me, threw me in the back of my own damned car. I think he’s planning to kill me and steal my identity.”

“Yeah, because what’re the chances that my identical twin happens to pass through East Bumfuck, Texas, on exactly the day I need him so I can steal his identity and escape the law?” 

Uncuffed Dean sure sounds like the Dean Raylan remembers.

Shaking his head a little but keeping his gun aimed steadily at the Dean with the gun, Raylan says, “Whoever you are, put the gun down.”

Dean shoots him an incredulous, are-you-stupid? look over his shoulder and says, “No way. Even cuffed, this thing’s fast and dangerous.”

“Thing?” If his voice has advanced into registers typically reserved for talking suicides off the ledge and knives out of the hands of crazy hostage-holders, Raylan’s to be forgiven. Twelve hours ago, he didn’t have one Dean Winchester in his life.

Now he has two.

It’s not exactly an embarrassment of riches, given the circumstances.

“Shapeshifter,” the Dean with the gun explains, even as the cuffed one laughs derisively and shakes his head, eyes a little wild. 

“You believe this guy? I’m tellin’ you, he’s crazy, Raylan. Certifiable. Seriously, can you get me out of these cuffs?”

“I have a better idea,” Raylan says. “Why don’t I just shoot the both of you and see what happens?”

Cuffed-Dean gives him wilder eyes yet and shakes his head vigorously, starting a litany of protest that Raylan ignores.

The Dean with the gun looks him over for a long minute, also ignoring his cuffed twin, and then shrugs gracelessly and says, “Alright. But do me a favor, will you? Shoot us with my gun?”

Then he makes a big show of engaging the safety, slowly putting the gun on the ground, and kicking it in Raylan’s direction.

“Huh,” Raylan says aloud, not sure what to make of that. Doesn’t seem like there’d be much profit in giving up his weapon, but the uncuffed Dean seems sincere. He’s even taken a few steps in the direction of the prisoner, standing beside him now like very strange “Before” and “After” photos.

As Raylan picks up the dusty gun and holsters his own, cuffed-Dean’s shouts take on an edge of hysteria, but the other Dean just stands there, hands at his sides, seemingly at ease.

It’s a lie, if Raylan can read people, and he definitely can: Dean’s worried, maybe even a little scared.

That doesn’t stop Raylan from shooting him.

*****

“Motherfucker!” Dean shouts first, and then, rather more obviously, “You shot me!” He gives Raylan a baleful stare. “I can’t believe you actually shot me!”

But Raylan isn’t paying Dean much mind, and when the haze of pain clears enough for Dean to think beyond his immediate condition, he traces the line of Raylan’s look to the shapeshifter formerly known as Dean, who seems to be—

“Is he…melting?” Raylan’s astonished tone is matched by a look of total incredulity that changes in in a flash to disgust as the shifter starts to shed its skin. It’s panting and making an eerie keening sound, and as close as Dean is, he can hear a heavy squelching noise, too, which can only be the skin sloughing off.

“Shoot it again!” he shouts, moving away from the creature before it gets any of its slime on him. “Shoot it again!” he repeats, voice forgivably high and a little breathy—being shot hurts, goddamnit!—and is about to continue the litany when the marshal gets with the program and plugs the thing straight through the heart.

Dean slumps, hand clapped over the bullet hole in his shoulder, breath coming in gasps as the adrenaline wears off and he starts to shake.

“What was—?” Raylan begins, and then he thinks better of it, mouth going thin as he takes in the creature’s revolting carcass and then Dean, blood streaming warm through his fingers like it’s draining heat out of the rest of him. His teeth are chattering now, and he really doesn’t have the wherewithal for the Monsters Are Real speech.

Thankfully, Marshal Givens seems made of sterner stuff and pulls himself together, stowing Dean’s gun in the small of his back like it belongs there and slinging Dean’s good arm around him as Dean starts to lose his battle with gravity.

“M’ car,” Dean thinks he says.

“I’ll take care of it,” he thinks Raylan Givens answers.

And then he’s done with thinking altogether for awhile.

*****

Dean’s shorter than Raylan but heavier, compact muscle, not to mention thirty pounds of leather, making the distance to Raylan’s car impossibly long.

Eventually, they get there, though, Raylan dumping Dean unceremoniously in the backseat—won’t be the first time he’s had to requisition detailing to get bloodstains out of the upholstery—and then walking over to the Impala to turn off her lights and lock her up. He secures the trunk for good measure, whistling low and long at the arsenal he finds, items he doesn’t recognize, a few he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He figures out how to lock it down, too, and pats the closed trunk like he’s soothing a skittish horse as he moves back to his own trunk, from which he retrieves a first aid kit and a shovel.

The first he uses to patch Dean up, at least enough to ensure the kid’s not going to bleed out.

The second he uses to make a shallow grave for the thing’s body, hoping to stave off, come daylight, the inevitable circle of tattle-tale buzzards long enough to come back for a more permanent solution.

He knows he should be calling it in. He knows he’s going to have to explain somehow that he’s shot and killed Leroy Tatum who isn’t Leroy Tatum, who was in the custody of Raylan Givens who wasn’t Raylan Givens. 

And he knows there’s a shitload of things he just doesn’t have a grasp on at all.

First thing’s first. Dean moans a little from the backseat, and Raylan checks on him from the wan wash of the overhead light. There’s the narrowest line of glimmer where the kid’s got his eyes open.

“Take it easy,” he says, turning his car on. “It’s barely a scratch.”

In fact, it’s a through-and-through, a good, clean shot Raylan had calculated to do the least amount of damage. He pours his back-up bottle of Scotch—the one he always keeps in with the spare tire under the rug in the trunk—on it, takes a jolt for himself, and steadies his hand for sewing.

Halfway back to the Wanderer’s Rest, Dean had woken up long enough to say, “No hospitals. Insurance,” and then subsided back into unconsciousness when they’d struck a particularly vicious pothole.

Which is one reason that Raylan is putting stitches in a half-naked, half-drunk Dean Winchester.

The other reason is sitting on the scarred round table under the window—a cigar box full of identities, all of them featuring Dean’s picture and a variety of inventive—and in some cases simply ridiculous—names.

“Oswald Osbourne? Really?” he mutters, yanking the surgical thread perhaps a little too hard.

Under him, Dean’s skin jumps and shudders, but Dean doesn’t make a sound. Sparing a glance for the kid’s face, Raylan sees the white tension lines around his mouth and eyes, the way he stares fixedly and unseeing at the water-stained ceiling above them.

“Can you turn over?” he asks after a minute, putting a hand to Dean’s good shoulder to help the process along.

Dean does as he’s told, still in a strange silence that bespeaks of unsettling familiarity with this kind of thing.

And judging by the scars that litter Dean’s torso and make a topographical map of his exposed back, Raylan guesses the kid has done this more than a few times.

It makes him a little sick and a little sad, and he remedies both those feelings—neither of which he needs or can afford—by taking another slug from the bottle.

When he’s finished, when the pile of sodden pink gauze has been thrown away, the holes neatly bandaged and Dean settled back against the pillows from both beds so that he’s not putting pressure on the wound, Raylan slumps into the chrome-and-naugahyde chair next to the table and takes a few more long, slow draws on the bottle.

“Hey, slow down there, Tex. Save some for the patient.”

Raylan adjusts his thousand yard stare to a closer view and finds Dean looking at him with a steady, even stare, expression pleasantly neutral, calculatingly coy smile turning up one corner of his lush mouth.

“Save it,” Raylan says shortly, looking away.

“Okay, look,” Dean begins, but Raylan stops him by holding up a hand.

“You’ve got a hole in you, and I’ve got a problem out on the flats to take care of, so let’s just not do this tonight. You can lie to me all you want tomorrow. Tonight, let’s get some sleep.”

Raylan doesn’t know Dean that well—not well enough, say, to lay a kiss against that liar’s mouth and share some silence of a different kind with him.

But he thinks he might see something genuine in Dean’s look then, the way his eyes widen and then narrow, like maybe Raylan’s struck a nerve Dean had forgotten he’d had.

Whatever, the expression is there and then gone before Raylan can say anything else, which is just as well, because the scotch is kicking in and he’s feeling all kinds of mean, and the kid looks like he’s gone a few rounds with an eighteen-wheeler.

“Just sleep,” Raylan relents, waving a hand at Dean and rising, a little unsteadily, to swagger his way to the bathroom. When he comes out a few minutes later, the kid’s asleep.

*****

There are plenty of circumstances in which Dean would have enjoyed waking up next to Raylan Givens. In his idle hours, few though they are, he’s given some thought to just such a scenario.

Typically, there are fewer clothes and more contact between them than he finds now, levering his eyes open one painful fraction at a time to take in the bed in which he’s slept, his bandaged shoulder, and the shirtless, bootless deputy marshal snoring in the bed on the other side of the cigarette-scarred nightstand between them.

By the quality of light lancing through the gap in the heavy curtains, Dean guesses it’s early morning, and by the pressure on his bladder, he figures it’s time to get up.

He does so slowly, biting back curses and taking shallow, panting breaths when his movements tug on the new sutures in his shoulder.

Morning urgencies attended to, Dean takes stock of his situation. No guns, knives, weapons of any kind. His jacket, now sporting a nifty new bullet hole, is draped over an ugly chair by the table near the window. A quick recon of its contents reveals that his keys aren’t there. They’re not in his pocket, either. A glance through the curtains verifies what the sinking feeling in his stomach had already suggested—his baby’s not out there.

“Shit,” he mutters quietly, noticing that his wallet, too, is gone. He’s got his cell phone, but who exactly would he call? He chuffs out a humorless laugh at the imaginary conversation between him and Dad if he made the mistake of calling his father.

And then his eyes fall on a familiar, battered cigar box sitting, as if to make a point, smack in the center of the nightstand.

“Shit,” he says again, a little louder.

From the bed he hears, “Relax. I’m not going to arrest you. Least not until I’ve had some breakfast.”

Marshal Givens sits up and throws his jean-clad legs over the far side of his bed. Back to Dean, he stretches obscenely, groaning all the while like he’s just gotten the best blowjob of his life.

It stirs something in Dean, makes him take in a long, steadying breath and look away from the flagrant display of lean, long muscle being offered.

“Relax,” Raylan says again, this time with a hint of something warmer in it. He’s giving Dean an appraising look over one tanned shoulder. “You’re in no shape to be taken advantage of. Besides, I make it a point not to sleep with people I might have to shoot again.”

Despite the words, Dean does relax, easing himself into the tableside chair and running a hand over his face. He grimaces at the grittiness he finds there and stands back up again, “Okay if I shower?”

Raylan stands, too. “Let me get in there for a minute, and then it’s all yours.”

The ease with which they share the motel room after the initial awkwardness of waking speaks to a mutual experience of having lived life on the road. Dean speculates about Raylan while he’s in the shower, wonders about his life as a marshal, considers the fact that he isn’t cuffed to a hospital bed in a guarded room somewhere rather than jerking himself off under a tepid shower in a one-star motel.

As he steps out of the bathroom, one of the two inadequate motel towels around his waist, he finds a fully clothed—and armed—Raylan at the table by the window, closed cigar box in front of him.

“You want to tell me what this is about?” he asks, tapping the box top.

Dean shrugs and then wishes he hadn’t. “You know how it is,” he starts, trying to bluff his way through it.

But Raylan must be a hell of a poker player because he doesn’t even blink, just answers, “Nope,” and keeps looking at Dean like Dean might be standing at the edge of a very high cliff and whatever he says next will determine his fate.

“Look, I’m a…” and he hesitates. Every warning his father ever gave him, every instinct beaten into him by the life he’s lived, tells him he can’t share who he is with anyone, let alone a deputy U.S. fucking marshal. “I hunt,” he finishes lamely, willing Raylan not to push. 

He sits down on the edge of the bed as Raylan opens the cigar box and flips through the laminated IDs.

“Try again,” he says after a longish pause Dean figures is supposed to make him want to fill it with words.

“I hunt,” Dean repeats, sounding definite this time. “Things like the shifter—that monster calling himself Leroy Tatum. And…other things.”

“Like what? Ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night?” Raylan’s scorn is a physical thing, pressing down on Dean’s shoulders and making him tired.

“Yeah, alright!” he snaps, “Okay, not the goblins part—they don’t exist, far as I know. But werewolves and poltergeists and water spirits. You name it, I hunt it. You don’t believe me, go back out there and take a look at what’s left of that thing you killed last night.” He gestures emphatically with the wrong arm and finds himself robbed of all breath but what’s left for cursing.

When he can finally take in a lungful, Raylan has moved to the end of the bed across from Dean, matching his posture, face in profile, box on his knees.

“Okay, let’s assume I believe you. That doesn’t explain what you’re doing with this.” Raylan holds up Dean’s FBI badge and photo ID. “Or this.” Forest Ranger. “Or this.” The most damning one of all—Deputy U.S. Marshal. “Why’d you pick me, Dean? You had to know I’d figure it out.”

Dean remembers not to shrug a second before he does it, aborting the motion and instead shaking his head and snorting, as if to indicate that he can’t believe his own gall. 

“Guess I thought…” What can he say? He thought he might get to see Raylan? Getting shot has never made Dean into a little girl yet, and he’s not going to let it happen this time, either. “I thought it’d be funny,” he finishes lamely.

“Bullshit,” Raylan says quietly, and though he hasn’t moved, he somehow sounds closer to Dean, almost touching him.

Dean shivers off the feeling that gives him and says nothing.

“Why?” Raylan asks, quieter still, and Dean swallows so hard he thinks the other man must hear it.

He tries for casual and manages lame instead. “Thought you might like a good, hard fuck.”

Raylan snorts, inelegant and expansive. “You had my number.”

“Would you have come?”

“Depends. How good are you?”

He’s tired and sore enough that it takes him a second to realize that the marshal is flirting with him, and by the time he’s come up with a reply, Raylan has stood up, closed the box, and dropped it on the bed behind Dean.

“I’m getting breakfast. You’re staying here. You aren’t exactly popular around these parts. You take your coffee black?”

Dean nods, says, “Thanks.”

Raylan smirks and pulls Dean’s wallet from his own back pocket. “Don’t thank me. You’re buying, Marshal Givens.” He strips a couple of bills from the wallet and drops it with a dull thwap on top of the cigar box.

Dean’s still shaking his head and wishing he were anywhere else but horny and mostly naked in this motel room when Raylan sidles out the door.

It’s only when he hears the marshal’s car start up that Dean remembers he hasn’t got a weapon.

“Shit,” he says again, realizing the lawman is still holding all the cards that matter.

****

“Was that diner in Tulsa?” Raylan hears when he pushes open the motel room door a couple of hours later to see Dean sitting propped up on the made bed, watching television in a U.S. Marshal tee-shirt Raylan himself never wears but always brings just in case.

Raylan raises an eyebrow, and Dean has the good manners to look sheepish.

“Sorry. Mine had blood and a big bullet hole in it. Besides, gunshot residue makes me itchy.”

“You always this much of a whiner?” Raylan asks, tossing a greasy bag on the bed beside Dean and setting a coffee down on the nightstand before sitting at the table to eat his own breakfast.

Dean gives him a largely unoriginal manual response and then asks, “You take care of the shifter?”

Raylan nods and then squints off into the distance, trying to get the image of the thing’s burning body out of his head. He can still smell it on his skin. Without another word, he drops his breakfast sandwich and stands up again, puts his hat on his bed, toes out of his boots.

Dean says nothing, but he watches Raylan strip out of his jeans and his shirt, watches with a hunger that has nothing to do with the hashbrown patty in his hand.

“Better eat your breakfast. Growing boy like you needs the energy,” he remarks, with a significant look at the telltale bulge behind Dean’s zipper.

Dean’s choking cough makes him smile as he closes the bathroom door.

When he emerges some time later, Dean is naked, stretched out on Raylan’s bed.

Raylan stops at the end of the bed and drops the towel from around his waist. “You’re a cocky son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

Dean’s got one hand propped behind his head on the pillow. The other is tucked protectively against his body. There’s a fresh bandage over his bullet wound. Raylan wonders idly if Dean could reach the back to cover that one, too.

“Turn over,” he says, chasing the thought, and Dean, after a moment’s hesitation, does as he’s told.

Raylan hears the kid loose a shuddering breath as he settles against the bed. This angle has to put pressure on his bad shoulder, but Raylan ignores Dean’s discomfort, eyes skating over the gauze bandage taped more-or-less evenly over the sutured exit wound.

“Impressive,” he murmurs, and he lets Dean think he means Dean’s ass, which is also impressive.

“You gonna cuff me, lawman?” Dean teases, but behind the cavalier tone is something darker, a certain uneasiness that makes Raylan’s cock swell harder still.

“Something like that,” he promises, kneeling on the bed and watching the way Dean’s body rocks toward him from the shift in gravity. It makes him feel unsettled himself, like the floor under the bed is tilting or the earth under them both is swaying.

Shaking off the feeling that this means more than what it is, Raylan reaches out a sure hand to trace a long, silver scar that curves in a crescent from Dean’s side to his lower back, as if someone had tried to scoop out his kidney.

“What did this?” he asks, pretty sure he doesn’t want an answer but equally sure he needs to hear it.

“Werewolf, ’96, Joplin.”

Raylan does reluctant math in his head and swallows hard. Dean had been seventeen, tops.

“This one?” he asks, ghosting a finger over Dean’s good shoulder, where a puckered red mound like a pursed mouth attests to some kind of vicious puncture.

“Poltergeist, ’94, Elkton.”

Younger still. Jesus.

“This?” he asks at last, pressing the tip of his finger against the white gauze covering his most recent wound, wondering what kind of scar it’s going to leave, trying not to think about the next hand that’s going to map the territory of Dean’s survival.

“Shifter, ’04, East Buttfuck.”

Unexpectedly, Raylan laughs, a sharp hard sound, and then flattens his hand to cover the whole of the wound and press down, enough to raise a murmur from Dean.

Then he straddles Dean’s narrow waist and says, “Turn over,” again.

*****

The friction from the rough bedspread against his cock as he works himself over on his back—an awkward, fits-and-starts motion thanks to the bulletholes—makes Dean’s breath catch and stutter.

The feel of the damp head of his cock dragging along Raylan’s inner knee as he turns over forces a sound out of Dean that would be embarrassing if he already weren’t so hard and ready that he could beg without blushing if it meant getting some relief.

There’s some small comfort in seeing that Raylan’s hard and ready, too, his cock flushed dark red, jutting out from the flat plane of his belly, an arrow of hair making a path Dean follows with his hand, happy to touch, happier to see the way the flesh of Raylan’s belly shivers as he takes in a sharp breath.

Raylan’s cock pulses when Dean wraps his hand around it with a gentle grip at first, like he’s testing its girth and weight, and then harder, with a confident upward stroke that pulls Raylan forward, hand slapping flat against the wall over Dean’s head, eyes closed and face turned down to Dean, “Fuck,” coming rough from his mouth. With his free hand, he traces Dean’s lips and then offers a finger for Dean to suck, which Dean takes in willingly, tracing the callused digit with his tongue and then hollowing his cheeks to mimic another motion, lower down.

Over him, Raylan moans and swears.

It hurts to bring his other hand up and cup Raylan’s balls, but the pain is rewarded by the way Raylan’s knees tremble to hold him upright against the pleasure Dean’s raising in him.

When Dean’s hand slips back, one questing finger seeking the muscled hole, Raylan throws his head back, exposing a long line of pale throat, and if Dean were whole, he’d lean up then and take that offered throat between his teeth.

As it is, he can only urge, “Fuck, yeah, c’mon” as Raylan seats himself on Dean’s finger and surges forward into Dean’s fist.

Both hands against the wall now and panting Dean’s name, Raylan works himself back and forth, once, twice, and then he stills and rises away from Dean, whining a little when Dean’s finger slips from him and Dean’s hand loosens its hold on his cock.

“Not like this,” he pants, opening his eyes to look down on Dean, who’s blinking sweat from his eyes and thrusting his hips upward in shallow motions, seeking touch.

Without breaking his gaze from Dean’s, Raylan shifts down the bed and lowers himself, reaching back with one hand to capture Dean’s neglected cock and slide it against Raylan’s own.

Dean uses his good hand to join Raylan’s, and together they find a rhythm that suits them. Sweat and pre-come ease their way until they’re sliding home in a perfect, tight, hot, wet grip, Raylan’s hand flexing under Dean’s, the thick slide of his cock beneath Dean’s palm and against his own aching member making him gasp and swear.

“Fuck,” he says, wishing for just a little more friction, and Raylan tightens his hand. Dean feels the orgasm surge in his belly, build in his balls, rocket out of him in a shouting, red-tinged haze of nonsense and Raylan’s name.

From the wetness on his belly and the way Raylan’s hand loosens under Dean’s, he knows the other man has arrived at the same place.

Raylan has the good manners to collapse to one side, but they’re joined at the shoulder, hips, ankle bones in a hot, wet mess that makes Dean laugh weakly until his eyes slide closed, exhaustion and satisfaction taking their expected toll.

When he wakes up sometime later, he realizes three things simultaneously.

Someone’s cleaned him up while he’s slept.

He feels hollow and empty in the best of ways.

And he’s alone in the room.

He doesn’t have to look around to know that Raylan’s things will be gone.

Working his way up in the bed, Dean sees on the nightstand, where he’d be most likely to look first, his keys, wallet, cigar box, his gun—the one Raylan had used to kill the shifter—and a familiar card, much-creased and thumbed, with a new number scribbled under the old one and an arrow drawn to indicate that Dean should turn the card over.

“New number,” the slanted, aggressive script on the back reads. “Call.”

That’s all.

Smiling, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, Dean tucks the card back in its usual place in his wallet, checks his gun over almost absentmindedly, automatically, and then flips open the cigar box.

A cursory rifle through it tells him what he already knew—the Deputy U.S. Marshal ID is gone.

Smiling a little more, Dean rises, rubs a hand across his face and glances out the window.

The Impala is parked in front of the room, the words “Wash Me!” written in the dust on her hood.

Grinning now, Dean slips on his dirty boxers, picks up the room key from the table by the window, and heads out to the car to get his duffle.

Back inside, he opens it up and reaches in for clean boxers, jeans, shirt, and is surprised to pull out the navy blue U.S. Marshal’s shirt he’d been wearing earlier in the day.

Staring at it, the white letters against the dark blue cotton, Dean feels something slither through his belly, a sense of uneasiness, something not quite right.

And then he realizes that what he’s feeling is owned. He lets the feeling sit for a minute, deciding whether or not he can live with it, never mind like it, and then he drops the boxers and heads for the shower, to wrap his own lonely hand around his growing shaft and wring from his memories another moment or two of pleasure.

It’ll have to do.

*****

A hundred and fifty miles away, Raylan Givens answers his ringing phone with a mixture of hope and dread. He doesn’t glance at the incoming number, whether out of fear that it will be Dean or out of fear that it won’t, he refuses to think about.

He’s decided that maybe he’ll start lying to himself, just a little.

“Givens,” he says, swallowing away the disappointment when Sally barks into his ear, “Where the hell have you been?”

Sighing, Raylan answers, “It’s a long story, Sal.”

Maybe hearing something in his voice, maybe sensing the distance crackling on the air between them, Sally asks, “Does it have a happy ending?”

Raylan pauses, long enough that he hears Sally say, “Raylan?”

“I don’t know, Sal. I don’t think it’s over yet,” he tells her at last.

“Oh.” A pause. “Coming home?”

Remembering his decision, made while the light of midday was painting lines on Dean’s sleeping body, Raylan lies, “Yeah,” and tells himself home is still ahead of him, not back there, where he thinks he might have found it after all.

“Yeah,” he says again, making it sound good, believing it. “What’s happening?”


End file.
